coloring

The feel of a film can be perceived from the hues it presents. I believe coloring is one of the most important aspects in a film. Especially in indie films.
That is why my group and I are having some issues deciding which hues to focus on.
This were our initial options:

As you can see we’re in between pink And blue hues. The pink would give it that feel of a romance and set the mood for the love story to evolve, and it look aesthetically pleasing too. However, the blue would foreshadow, with the poem, the breakup after, and it also makes the colors in a few shots pop. Like this one : 

Blue symbolizes sadness and depression as Doctor uses in Inside Out to create the character of Sadness. Moreover, the term “feeling blue” represents the feeling of unhappiness, like Grad talks about in Why the color Blue is associated with sadness,  the custom of relating blue to sadness goes back to West African culture and “the blues”, as well as ships that would raise a blue flag when a captain would die at sea.  I thought the origin of the custom was extremely interesting. However, like Grad, I do not relate blue to sadness, I relate it to the sky, trust, and the sea, things that don’t make me sad. 

Pink. I’ve been obsessed with millennial pink, I just think it’s so pleasing to the eye, and it give me an innocent feel that I want my character to have. Like in Baker and Grants article, pink symbolizes innocent love and passion, which is what I want my romance to feel like. 

I created this color mood boards with Canva, PicsArt and VSCOX:

I fortunately, had the VSCOX subscription from before, so I will be using it to edit my shots. I'm still not sure if I will edit each individual shot, or just the final product. The later would be risky in terms of the brightness, since the lightning of each shot varies tremendously.

Here is a rough draft of the first minute. A lot has to still be done, but I just wanted to see the order of the shots, for when I edit in Final cut, since I have to go down to Miami. This was done in DaVinci Resolve, I had never used it before, but even though it is a great resource, I did not like it. It is very laggy, and to do precise cuts, its problematic. The transitions look rough, and it took me an unnecessary amount of time. It also takes very long to download the final product.

Anyway here it is:

     

Since I'm pretty sure I'm  doing pink, I want to draw inspiration from films with similar coloring. I did some research and I found a podcast by A24, were Greta Gerwig and Barry Jenkins, directors of Ladybird and Moonlight respectively, talk about the coloring of their films and their choices. Gerwig talks about the many choices when making a film, shooting on film, layering colors, using xerox, etc. and i thought it was interesting listening to this amazing directors, having the same dilemmas I'm having, obviously in a smaller scale. "It felt like the painted frames of early color films. Like those Isadora Duncan movies where she would paint her skirts". That's how Jenkins describes the coloring of ladybird, which is exactly the feel I'm trying to imitate. 

 
It is clear Gerwig contrast the use of blue and pink throughout the film, which makes ladybird stand out with her hair. I am not sure i can achieve the same vibrance of both colors, without looking too intense for one with VSCOX, so I'm going to be playing with the filters to see.
Jenkins those the same in Moonlight:

We'll see how it turns out, but hopefully I can achieve something similar.

st!

Baker, Logan. “Manipulating the Audience's Emotions With Color.” The Beat: A Blog by PremiumBeat, Shutterstock Premium Beat, 13 Sept. 2016, www.premiumbeat.com/blog/manipulate-emotions-with-color-in-film/.'

Grad, Laurie Burrows. “Why The Color Blue Is Associated With Sadness.” The Huffington Post, TheHuffingtonPost.com, 26 Nov. 2017, www.huffingtonpost.com/laurie-burrows-grad/color-blue-sadness_b_13233778.html.

“All The Way Home with Barry Jenkins & Greta Gerwig.” A24, a24films.com/notes/2018/02/episode-01-all-the-way-home-with-barry-jenkins-greta-gerwig.

Gerwig, Greta, director. Ladybird Trailer. IMDB, 2017, www.imdb.com/title/tt4925292/videoplayer/vi1325840665.

Jenkins, Barry, director. Moonlight Trailer. A24, YouTube, 11 Aug. 2016, www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NJj12tJzqc.